Description:
Contents; Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Works of Plato; Works of Aristotle; Works of Thomas Aquinas; Introduction; 1. The Nature of Metaphysics; 2. The Scope of This Study; 3. Thought and Being; Chapter One. Parmenides; 1. Milesian Background; 2. Being and Thinking; 3. What Is Being?; Chapter Two. Plato; 1. Reading Plato; 2. Being as Form; 3. The Meaning of Separation; 4. The Levels of Being; 5. The Ascent of the Soul; 6. Knowledge as sunousia; 7. The Good; 8. The Forms and the Demiurge; 9. The Motion of Intellect; 10. The Receptacle of Becoming; Chapter Three. Aristotle1. The Principles of Change2. Nature as Form; 3. Reality as Form: Metaphysics Z; 4. The Priority of Act; 5. The Unmoved Mover; 6. Life, Sense, and Intellect: On the Soul; Chapter Four. Plotinus; 1. Being and Intellect; 2. The One beyond Being; 3. The Production of Being; 4. Transcendence and Immanence; 5. Being as Beauty; 6. The Sensible and the Intelligible; 7. The Two Matters; Chapter Five. Thomas Aquinas; 1. Aquinas and the Philosophical Tradition; 2. Essence and Existence; 3. God as Existence Itself; 4. Creatures and God; 5. Analogical Predication; 6. The Transcendentals; Bibliography1. Primary Sources2. Select Secondary Sources; General Index; Index LocorumIn Thinking Being, Perl articulates central arguments and ideas regarding the nature of reality in Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Thomas Aquinas, thematizing the indissoluble togetherness of thought and being, and focusing on continuity rather than opposition within this tradition.